thought to be recognized by his neighbors as a well-known person in
Nuneaton. Milby and its High street are no other than Nuneaton and its
market-place. The character of the town and the manner of life there are
all sketched from the Nuneaton of George Eliot's childhood. The school she
attended was very near the vicarage. While she was attending this school,
when about nine years old, a young curate from a neighboring hamlet was
permitted by the Bishop to give Sunday-evening lectures in the Nuneaton
church, with the results described in _Janet's Repentance_.
In _Adam Bede_ there is also a considerable element of actual history. The
heroine, Dinah Morris, is, in some slight particulars at least, sketched
from Elizabeth Evans, an aunt of George Eliot's. Elizabeth Evans was born
at Newbold, Lincolnshire, in 1776. [Footnote: This subject has been fully
worked out in a book published by Blackwood, "George Eliot in Derbyshire: a
volume of gossip about passages in the novels of George Eliot," by Guy
Roslyn. Reprinted from London Society, with alterations and additions, and
an introduction by George Barnett Smith. Its statements are mainly based on
a small book published in London in 1859, by Talbot & Co., entitled "Seth
Bede, the Methody: his Life and Labors." Guy Roslyn is a pseudonym for
Joshua Hatton.] She was a beautiful woman when young, with soft gray eyes
and a fine face, and had a very simple and gentle manner. She was a
Methodist preacher, lived at Wirksworth, Derbyshire, and preached wherever
an opportunity occurred. When it was forbidden that women should preach,
she continued to exhort in the cottages, and to visit the poor and the sick
in their homes. She married Samuel Evans, who was born in Boston, and was a
carpenter. He had a brother William, who was a joiner and builder. Their
father was a village carpenter and undertaker, honest and respectable, but
who took to drink in his later years. He was at an ale-house very late one
night, and the next morning was found dead in a brook near his house.
Samuel became a Methodist and a preacher, but was teased about it by his
brother, who criticised his blunders in prayer and preaching. He was gentle
and very considerate at home, and was greatly attached to his brother,
though they could not agree in matters of religion. While they were
partners in business they prospered, but Samuel did not succeed when by
himself. Samuel and Elizabeth were married at St. Mary's Church,
Nottingham. In company with a Miss Richards, Elizabeth attended, in 1801 or
1802, a Mary Voce who had poisoned her child. They visited her in jail, and
were with her when she was hung in Nottingham. Elizabeth wrote an account
of her own life, especially of her conversion and her early work in the
ministry. Concerning the execution of Mary Voce, she gives this account:
"At seven o'clock [on the morning of the execution] we all knelt down in
prayer, and at ten minutes before eight o'clock the Lord in mercy spoke
peace to her soul. She cried out, 'Oh, how happy I am! the Lord has
pardoned all my sins, and I am going to heaven.' She never lost the
evidence for one moment, and always rejoiced in the hope of glory. Is it
not by grace we are saved through faith? And is not the Saviour exalted at
the Father's right hand to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of
sins? If salvation were by works who would be saved? The vilest and worst
may come unto Him. None need despair. None ought to presume. Miss Richards
and I attended her to the place of execution. Our feelings on this occasion
were very acute. We rode with her in the cart to the awful place. Our
people sang with her all the way, which I think was a mile and a half. We
were enabled to lift up our hearts unto the Lord in her behalf, and she was
enabled to bear a public testimony that God in mercy had pardoned all her
sins. When the cap was drawn over her face, and she was about to be turned
off, she cried, 'Glory! glory! glory! the angels are waiting around me.'
And she died almost without a struggle. At this awful spot I lost a great
deal of the fear of man, which to me had been a great hindrance for a long
time. I felt if God would send me to the uttermost parts of the earth I
would go, and at intervals felt I could embrace a martyr's flame. Oh, this
burning love of God, what will it not endure? I could not think I had an
enemy in the world. I am certain I enjoyed that salvation that if they had
smote me on one cheek, I could have turned to them the other also. I lived
"'The life of heaven above,
All the life of glorious love.'
"I seemed myself to live between heaven and earth. I was not in heaven
because of my body, nor upon earth because of my soul. Earth was a scale to
heaven, and all I tasted was God. I could pray without ceasing, and in
everything give thanks. I felt that the secret of the Lord is with them
that fear Him. If I wanted to know anything I had only to ask, and it was
given, generally in a moment. Whether I was in the public street, or at my
work, or in my private room, I had continued intercourse with my God; and
many, I think I may say hundreds of times, He shone upon His Word, and
showed me the meaning thereof, that is, texts of scripture, so as to
furnish me with sufficient matter to speak to poor sinners for a sufficient
length of time."
The life of Elizabeth Evans was only a hint to the mind of the author of
_Adam Bede_. Dinah was not intended as a portrait, and the resemblances
between the two were probably not the result of a conscious purpose on the
part of George Eliot. Soon after the publication of _Adam Bede_, when
gossip had begun to report that Dinah Morris was an accurate sketch of
Elizabeth Evans, and even that her sermon and prayers had been copied from
the writings of the aunt, George Eliot wrote a letter to her intimate
friend, Miss Sara Hennell, in which she explained to what extent she was
indebted to Elizabeth Evans for the portrait of Dinah Morris.
HOLLY LODGE, Oct. 7, 1850.
Dear Sara,--I should like, while the subject is vividly present with me, to
tell you more exactly than I have ever yet done, _what_ I knew of my aunt,
Elizabeth Evans. My father, you know, lived in Warwickshire all my life
with him, having finally left Staffordshire first, and then Derbyshire, six
or seven years before he married my mother.... [Footnote: What is here
omitted of this letter will be found on page 12.]
As to my aunt's conversation, it is a fact that the only two things of any
interest I remember in our lonely sittings and walks are her telling me one
sunny afternoon how she had, with another pious woman, visited an unhappy
girl in prison, stayed with her all night, and gone with her to execution,
and one or two accounts of supposed miracles in which she believed--among
the rest, _the face with the crown of thorns seen in the glass_. In her
account of the prison scenes. I remember no word she uttered--I only
remember her tone and manner, and the deep feeling I had under the recital.
Of the girl she knew nothing, I believe--or told me nothing--but that she
was a common coarse girl, convicted of child-murder. The incident lay in my
mind for years on years as a dead germ, apparently, till time had made my
mind a nisus in which it could fructify; it then turned out to be the germ
of _Adam Bede_.
I saw my aunt twice after this. Once I spent a day and a night with my
father in the Wirksworth cottage, sleeping with my aunt, I remember. Our
interview was less interesting than in the former time: I think I was less
simply devoted to religious ideas. And once again she came with my uncle to
see me--when father and I were living at Foleshill; _then_ there was some
pain, for I had given up the form of Christian belief, and was in a crude
state of free-thinking. She stayed about three or four days, I think. This
is all I remember distinctly, as matter I could write down, of my dear
aunt, whom I really loved. You see how she suggested Dinah; but it is not
possible you should see as I do how her entire individuality differed from
Dinah's. How curious it seems to me that people should think Dinah's
sermon, prayers and speeches were _copied_--when they were written with hot
tears as they surged up in my own mind!
As to my indebtedness to facts of _locale_, and personal history of a small
kind connected with Staffordshire and Derbyshire--you may imagine of what
kind that is when I tell you that I never remained in either of those
counties more than a few days together, and of only two such visits have I
more than a shadowy, interrupted recollection. The details which I knew as
facts and have made use of for my picture were gathered from such imperfect
allusion and narrative as I heard from my father in his occasional talk
about old times.
As to my aunt's children or grandchildren saying, if they _did_ say, that
Dinah is a good portrait of my aunt--that is simply the vague, easily
satisfied notion imperfectly instructed people always have of portraits. It
is not surprising that simple men and women without pretension to
enlightened discrimination should think a generic resemblance constitutes a
portrait, when we see the great public so accustomed to be delighted with
_mis_-representations of life and character, which they accept as
representations, that they are scandalized when art makes a nearer approach
to the truth.
Perhaps I am doing a superfluous thing in writing all this to you, but I am
prompted to do it by the feeling that in future years _Adam Bede_ and all
that concerns it may have become a dim portion of the past, and I may not
be able to recall so much of the truth as I have now told you.
Once more, thanks, dear Sara. Ever your loving
MARIAN.
When, in 1876, a book was published to show the identity of Dinah Morris
and Elizabeth Evans, George Eliot wrote to the author to protest against
such a conclusion. She said to him that the one was not intended to
represent the other, and that any identification of the two would be
protested against as not only false in fact and tending to perpetuate
false notions about art, but also as a gross breach of social decorum. Yet
these declarations concerning Elizabeth Evans have been repeated, and to
them has been added the assertion that she actually copied in _Adam Bede_
the history and sermons of Dinah Morris. [Footnote: "Dinah Morris and
Elizabeth Evans," an article by L. Buckley in The Century for August,
1882.] During visits to her aunt in 1842 we are told they spent several
hours together each day. "They used to go to the house of one of Mrs.
Evans's married daughters, where they had the parlor to themselves and had
long conversations. These secret conversations excited some curiosity in
the family, and one day Mrs. Evans's daughter said, 'Mother, I can't think
what thee and Mary Ann have got to talk about so much.' To which Mrs. Evans
replied, 'Well, my dear, I don't know what she wants, but she gets me to
tell her all about my life and my religious experience, and she puts it all
down in a little book. I can't make out what she wants it for.' While at
Wirksworth, Miss Evans made a note of everything people said in her
hearing; no matter who was speaking, down it went into the note-book, which
seemed never out of her hand. These notes she transcribed every night
before going to rest. After her departure Mrs. Evans said to her daughter,
'Oh dear, Mary Ann has got one thing I did not mean her to take away, and
that is the notes of the first sermon I preached on Ellaston Green.' The
sermon preached by Dinah on Hayslope Green has been recognized as one of
Mrs. Evans's." The purpose here seems to be to convey the impression that
George Eliot actually carried away one of Mrs. Evans's sermons, and that
she afterwards copied it into _Adam Bede_. George Eliot's own positive
statement on this subject ought to be sufficient to convince any candid
mind the sermon was not copied. The evidence brought forward so far in
regard to the relations of Dinah Morris to Elizabeth Evans is not
sufficient to prove the one was taken from the other. George Eliot's
declarations, written soon after _Adam Bede_ was published, when all was
perfectly fresh in her mind, and after her relatives had made their
statements about Mrs. Evans, ought to settle the matter forever. Unless
new and far more positive evidence is brought forward, Dinah Morris ought
to be regarded as substantially an original creation.
That some features of Elizabeth Evans's character were sketched into that
of Dinah Morris seems certain. It is also said that the names of Mrs.
Poyser and Bartle Massey were the names of actual persons, the latter being
the schoolmaster of her father. As showing her power of local coloring,
Miss Mathilde Blind relates this incident: "On its first appearance, _Adam
Bede_ was read aloud to an old man, an intimate associate of Robert Evans
in his Staffordshire days. This man knew nothing concerning either author
or subject beforehand, and his astonishment was boundless on recognizing so
many friends and incidents of his own youth portrayed with unerring
fidelity, he sat up half the night listening to the story in breathless
excitement, now and then slapping his knees as he exclaimed, 'That's
Robert, that's Robert, to the life.'"
In _Adam Bede_, as well as in the _Clerical Scenes_ and _The Mill on the
Floss_, she describes types of character instead of actual personages; and
yet so much of the realistic is embodied that more than one of her
characters has been identified as being in a considerable degree a sketch
from life. This is true of _The Mill on the Floss_ even more fully than of
her previous books. In Maggie she has portrayed one side of her own
character, and made use of much of her early experience. Lucy is said to be
her sister, and two of her aunts are sketched in the aunts of Maggie--Mrs.
Glegg and Mrs. Pullett. Her brother recognized the minute faithfulness of
this story, as he did that of _Adam Bede_. The town of St. Ogg's is a good
description of the tide-water town of Gainesborough in Lincolnshire. The
Hayslope of _Adam Bede_ has been identified as the village of Ellaston,
four miles from Ashbourne, in Derbyshire. It is near Wirksworth, the home
of Elizabeth Evans.
The local exactness of George Eliot's descriptions is another evidence of
her realism. "It is not unlikely," suggests Mr. Kegan Paul, "that the time
will come when with one or other of her books in their hand, people will
wander among the scenes of George Eliot's early youth, and trace each
allusion, as they are wont to do at Abbotsford or Newstead, and they will
recognize the photographic minuteness and accuracy with which these scenes,
so long unvisited, had stamped themselves on the mind of the observant
girl." The historical setting of her novels is also faithful in even minute
details. The time of "Mr. Gilfil's Love Story" is at the beginning of the
last quarter of the eighteenth century, and it well describes the country
customs of the earlier years of the present century. _Adam Bede_ describes
the first decade of the present century, while _Silas Marner_ is a little
later. With "Amos Barton," and _The Mill on the Floss_ we are in the second
decade of the century, before hand-looms had gone out or railroads had come
in. She has a fondness for these days of rustic simplicity, quiet habits
and homely disingenuousness, and she more than once expresses a doubt if
much has been gained by the introduction of machinery, suffrage and
culture. She regrets that--
Human advancement has no moments when conservative reforming intellect
takes a nap, while imagination does a little toryism by the sly,
revelling in regret that dear old brown, crumbling, picturesque
inefficiency is everywhere giving place to sick-and-span, new-painted,
new-varnished efficiency, which will yield endless diagrams, plans,
elevations and sections; but, alas! no picture. Mine, I fear, is
not a well-regulated mind: it has an occasional tenderness for old
abuses; it lingers with a certain fondness over the days of nasal
clerks and top-booted parsons, and has a sigh for the departed shades
of vulgar errors. [Footnote: Amos Barton, chapter I.]
In _Adam Bede_, when describing a leisurely walk home from church in the
good old days, she bursts out again into enthusiastic praise of the time
before there was so much advancement and culture.
Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through
the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those
old leisurely times when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal,
was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them
old brown leather covers, and opened with a remarkable precision always
in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone,
and the pack-horses and the slow wagons and the pedlers who brought
bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell
you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create
leisure for mankind. Do not believe them; it only creates a vacuum for
eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for
amusement; prone to excursion trains, art museums, periodical
literature and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and
cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different
personage; he only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was
free from that "periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He
was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion--of
quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis, happy in his inability to
know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived
chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was
fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall, and scenting the apricots
when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself
under the orchard boughs at noon when the summer pears were falling. He
knew nothing of week-day services, and thought none the worse of the
Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the
blessing--liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were
the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly
conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal
of beer or port wine--not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and
lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure; he
fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners and slept the
sleep of the irresponsible; for had he not kept up his charter by going
to church on the Sunday afternoon? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe
upon him and judge him by our modern standard; he never went to Exeter
Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read _Tracts for the Times_ or
_Sartor Resartus_." [Footnote: Adam Bede, chapter LII.]
Her faithfulness to the life she describes is seen in her skilful use of
dialect. The sense of local coloring is greatly heightened by the dialogues
which speak the language of the people portrayed. When Luke describes his
rabbits as _nesh_ things, and Mrs. Jerome says little _gells_ should be
seen and not heard, and Tommy Trounsom mentions his readiness to pick up a
_chanch_ penny, we are brought closer to the homely life of these people.
She has so well succeeded, in Mr. Carson's words, in portraying "what they
call the dileck as is spoke hereabout," the reader is enabled to realize,
as he could not so well do by any other method, the homeliness and
rusticity of the life presented.
George Eliot has not attempted a great variety in the use of dialect, for
she has avoided unfamiliar words, and has made use of no expressions which
would puzzle her readers in the attempt to understand them. The words not
to be found in the dictionary are those which may in almost every instance
be heard in the speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is
spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey,
dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy,
plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the _Transactions of
the English_ _Dialect Society_, she has explained her methods of using
dialect.
It must be borne in mind that my inclination to be as close as I could
to the rendering of dialect, both in words and spelling, was constantly
checked by the artistic duty of being generally intelligible. But for
that check I should have given a stronger color to the dialogue in
_Adam Sede_, which is modelled on the talk of North Staffordshire and
the neighboring part of Derbyshire. The spelling, being determined by
my own ear alone, was necessarily a matter of anxiety, for it would be
as possible to quarrel about it as about the spelling of Oriental
names. The district imagined as the scene of _Silas Marner_ is in North
Warwickshire; but here, and in all my other presentations of English
life except _Adam Bede_, it has been my intention to give the general
physiognomy rather than a close portraiture of the provincial speech as
I have heard it in the Midland or Mercian region. It is a just demand
that art should keep clear of such specialties as would make it a
puzzle for the larger part of its public; still, one is not bound to
respect the lazy obtuseness or snobbish ignorance of people who do not
care to know more of their native tongue than the vocabulary of the
drawing-room and the newspaper.
It may be said of George Eliot's realism that she did not borrow nearly so
much from actual observation as was done by Charlotte Brontë, in whose
novels, scenes, persons and events are described with great accuracy and
fulness. In large measure Charlotte Brontë borrowed her materials from the
life about her. Large as was her invention, original as her mind was, and
unique in its thought, yet she seems to have been unable to create the
plots of her novels without aid from real events and persons. Persons and
scenes and events were so vividly portrayed in _Jane Eyre_ as to be at once
recognized, subjecting the author to much annoyance and mortification. In
_Shirley_ there is even a larger use of local traditions and manners, the
locality of the story being described with great accuracy. George Eliot did
not use such materials to nearly so great an extent, being far less
dependent on them. Nor had she anything of Scott's need of local
traditions. Accurate as she is, she creates her own story, not depending,
as he did, on the suggestive help of the stories of the past. Few of his
novels are the entire creations of his own mind; but he used every hint and
suggestion he could find as the basis of his work. In this, George Eliot is
no more a realist than either of her great predecessors. Even Goldsmith and
Fielding were no more creative and original than she, for they depended as
much as she on the occurrences of real life for their plots. All genuine
novelists have drawn their materials from the life about them, and they
could not attain success otherwise. All depends, however, on how the
material thus used is made to bear its results. If Charlotte Brontë
borrowed more from actual life of event and scenery, yet she was not more a
realist; rather her power lies in something higher than realism, in that
subtle insight and creative power which gives originality to her work. She
was an idealist keeping close to the actual; and in this fact is to be
found her superiority to George Eliot in certain directions. George Eliot
studied life accurately and intimately, but she did not tie herself to any
individual occurrences or persons. She had so absorbed the spirit of the
life amidst which she lived, as to give a true expression to it under an
almost purely fictitious garb.